Tucker-Castleberry -- Relationships Do Matter

Aside from the sports printing, Tucker-Castleberry produces general commercial items such as flyers, brochures, pocket folders, catalogs, booklets, pamphlets, small magazines, Christmas cards and 12-month calendars. The printer relies on a trio of MAN Roland sheetfed presses to fulfill its needs, and much of the equipment in-house is no more than 10 years old, thanks to a government-sanctioned relocation process of sorts. Ironically, the world of sports played a considerable role in Tucker-Castleberry's move from downtown to a new building a few miles north of the city.

In 1995, the state of Georgia harvested Tucker-Castleberry's property to construct Centennial Olympic Park for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Tucker saw the relocation as an opportunity rather than a challenge and purchased virtually all new equipment to usher in the new digs. In came the first of three 40˝ MAN Roland 700s: a six-color with a tower coating unit. Three MBO folders, a six-pocket Sheridan saddlestitcher and Polar cutting equipment also joined the fray.

"We bought new equipment because we knew that we needed to be on the leading edge of technology in order to succeed," Tucker says. "Although a 15-year-old press with no payments running at 9,000 impressions per hour is nice, a new press running at 15,000 iph can make you more money and run rings around your competition. I knew our sales force could sell the work to fill the new capacity, and they did."

More Presses Added

Tucker didn't stop there. In 1998, he bolstered the pressroom with another six-color Roland 700 that boasted the same capabilities as the earlier model and, in 2004, a six-color 700 four-over-two perfector with coater went live. The printer has contracted for another press slated to be installed in June of 2006. All of the presses are tied together with the MAN Roland PECOM system, which reduces six-color makeready times to as little as 10 minutes.